


A Catching Sickness

by mautadite



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Post-Game(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-29
Updated: 2016-10-29
Packaged: 2018-08-27 14:27:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8405104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mautadite/pseuds/mautadite
Summary: “All right,” Kasumi decides. “This is the last straw. Somewhere out in the Tuchankan wastelands, some poor camel is gasping out its final, tortured breath.”





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Stonestrewn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stonestrewn/gifts).



> I can’t draw worth a heck, but your art prompts for this ship were so cute I couldn’t resist giving it a try in fic form. :)

Kasumi stares down at the buffet table.

“All right,” she decides. “This is the last straw. Somewhere out in the Tuchankan wastelands, some poor camel is gasping out its final, tortured breath.”

She doesn’t expect a reply as much as she expects to perhaps confuse some of her fellow patrons (indeed, the woman next to her decked out in at least seven hundred and fifty thousand credits worth of Silaris diamonds makes a face, and shuffles away unsubtly) but a moment later, Liara’s voice comes, a tickle in her ear.

“What is it?”

“Oh, there you are.” She selects one of the canapés, sniffs it, and then cloaks when she knows that she’s unobserved. She shadow-steps to the other end of the table. “Are you done schmoozing it up with Kirdeka?”

“More or less. He was happy to offer his assistance once I convinced him of the viability of the venture.”

“‘Convinced him’, huh?” Kasumi drops the canapé into a passing krogan’s glass of champagne, and watches as it starts to fizzle. “Did you make him pee his pants? Cry a little?”

Liara sighs, but there’s also the hint of laughter hidden around the edges. Asari do everything so very expressively, and Liara is no exception.

“Hardly. I’m here in my capacity as an archaeologist, a prothean expert and an art enthusiast; nothing more,” she says demurely.

Kasumi makes her very best ‘pfft’ noise. “Admit it, you terrified him.”

In lieu of answering, Liara chuckles outright this time. Hearing it makes Kasumi smile, even as she’s nibbling at the corner of a cracker that tastes like it’s made of shotgun shells, sawdust and malachite. Ugh. Even if there weren’t thousands of people dedicated to robbing them blind, rich people would still find new and inventive ways to hurt themselves.

“Where are you?” Liara asks. “I’ll be on my way up to the gallery in five.”

“I’m at the buffet table, suffering in silence.”

“Is that what you meant when you said it was the last straw? You do realise that there are other ways to drink alcohol, right?”

Kasumi groans wholeheartedly, shifting silently to another part of the table.

“Okay no, I change my mind. _That_ was the last straw. First you bring me to Illium, a planet full of obnoxiously rich dirtbags begging to be scammed, and say we’re not scamming anyone. Then you bring to me a fancy party at a private art gallery full of priceless pieces just begging to be stolen, and say we’re not stealing anything. Then the food has the audacity to be godawful, ‘I could and _have_ found better in a back alley on Omega’ kind of godawful. And now you’re making terrible jokes when I’m not around to see you do that adorable thing where you try not to laugh at your own punchline.” She pokes at a plate brimming with the asari version of biscotti, topped with some kind of greenish tartar. “You killed the camel, Liara. You broke its back and it’s dead. I hope you’re proud.”

The sound coming through the transmitter now sounds very much like Liara does when she’s trying not to laugh. Unfortunately for her, not laughing when she’s genuinely amused is probably the one thing she’s actually not good at.

“I’ll make it up to you, I promise. We _do_ have a job next week.”

Kasumi makes a show of pouting, even though her girlfriend can’t see it.

“It’ll take more than one job to make up for this.”

“I’ll start now, then. Come meet me.”

It’s not a request that Kasumi could ever dream of ignoring, especially when Liara puts on that _come hither_ voice. 

She leaves the buffet table behind her and steps silently out into the hall. She forgets who owns this mansion, some retired hanar dignitary or other, but it couldn’t scream ‘old money’ harder if it was wallpapered with akoya pearls. High ceilings, extravagant chandeliers, flowery balustrades, the works. The gallery portion of the property is no less ostentatious; paintings and statues are mounted on displays with gold and platinum embellishments, hooked up to very expensive security systems.

Standing on the balcony, it’s easy to spot Liara below. She looks just as she did a few hours ago: sleek, streamlined white dress; minimal, tasteful jewellery; lips flushed pink and eyebrows immaculately painted on. There’s a tiny smudge of red on her cheek, from where Kasumi had kissed her earlier in the evening. Kasumi smiles, and begins sifting through the crowd, bypassing waiters with trays piled high and all the guests who are mingling and laughing and doing rich people things. 

When she’s a few metres away, she sheds her cloak. Liara is observing an exquisite piece; a twenty-first century self-sculpture by an amazing drell artist, and one of the few pieces of high art to make it off Rakhana intact. Kasumi walks up beside her, threads their arms together, and sighs wistfully.

“The worst part,” she declares, “are the security systems.”

Liara cocks her head, lifting a brow.

“Don’t tell me Kasumi Goto has finally met her technological match.”

Kasumi snorts. “Please. The worst part is that they’re difficult, but oh so _doable_. An easy security system wouldn’t have had any appeal; if I wanted easy I could break into the Intergalactic Bank. But this? The latest in the ILX-5000 series? I would have so much _fun_ stealing all this crap.”

Liara pats her arm placatingly.

“I know you would. But you’re not going to.”

Now that Liara is here to see it, Kasumi tries her pout on for size again. “Not even one? The tiniest statue? Just to prove I could do it? We’re not even going to be in this city for much longer; it’s not like we’ll be playing where we work.”

Liara rubs her arm again, a dimple pushing deep into her cheek.

“No.”

“How about a small painting? He’s got so many of those, he probably won’t miss one.”

Liara chuckles.

“Am I going to have to hold your hand the entire time?” As she tugs Kasumi over to another sculpture, this one from the Turian Renaissance, she does just that, crossing wrists and linking their fingers together in a loose handhold. 

Kasumi pretends to consider. “Maybe. I mean, I’m certainly not complaining.”

“This was probably your plan all along, wasn’t it?” Liara teases. “Getting me to hold your hand.” 

That gets a little peal of laughter out of her. As far as master plans go, it’s certainly not a bad one. A pretty girl’s hand in her own, a thumb rubbing her knuckles, her heart doing Olympic somersaults… Kasumi’s definitely had heists that yielded far less profitable results. 

“Remind me that I need a moustache for twirling in moments like these.”

Chuckling, Liara tugs her along to the next display. They draw a few looks, which Kasumi isn’t entirely unused to. Liara is so beautiful, and a mini-celebrity besides. Kasumi… well, mostly, they’re staring at the get-up. She supposes the _hooded chic_ look hasn’t quite caught on yet. It puts her a bit off kilter, to be so present and observable in the midst of so many people, but she still has her anonymity, and even better, she has Liara right next to her, a warm and comfortable presence.

“How many, by the way?” Liara asks as they circle around to a tableau of dancing elcor. Kasumi tilts her head.

“Hm?”

“You didn’t shadow-step over from the balcony; you walked. How many pockets did you pick?”

The corner of her mouth is already twitching, and Kasumi is grinning as well. She knows it’ll be useless to prevaricate. Liara isn’t who she is for nothing.

“Only a few pockets,” she promises. “The really bad pockets. The most obnoxious pockets, even. Provably the worst ones.”

Liara purses her lips into the thing that isn’t a smile, but totally _wants_ to be a smile. 

“Goddess, Kasumi. You know, I could choose to be offended that being out on a date with me isn’t thrilling enough for you.”

“Oh, you know that’s not true.” She squeezes Liara’s hand. “On a scale from one to thrilling, you’re a solid nine-point-Shepard. But you know what they say. There’s _nothing_ that can’t be improved with a little grand larceny. It’s just a fact.”

Liara levels her with a look that’s half exasperated, but somehow all amusement. 

“Want me to give ‘em back?” Kasumi continues. “Gotta admit, while it’d be fun to put their jewels on different body parts and their wallets in different pockets and watch them freak out a little, I get attached quickly. Some of these diamonds are already my best friends.”

“No, no, that won’t be necessary.” Liara disentangles their hands for a moment to bring up her omnitool and quickly type up a few messages. Her fingers fly over the screen with precision quickness. “There we go,” she says, hitting a final button and recapturing Kasumi’s hand in one smooth motion.

“What was that about?”

“You were right about one thing. In a crowd like this, there are low-lives aplenty. Just in case security is alerted to the thefts before we’re gone, I’ve identified a few plausible prospects to pin it on. I have an agent nearby; they’ll know what to do.”

Kasumi pauses, and then places her free hand on her chest. She could almost swoon.

“I _love_ it when you throw your weight around,” she says with feeling.

Liara’s shoulders shake with her silent laughter.

“Come on.” She squeezes Kasumi’s hand. “What do you say we go look at some more priceless pieces of art? We can see who can appraise their market value the quickest and the most accurately.”

A warm fullness seeps into Kasumi’s skin, and seems to travel all the way down to the marrow of her bones. There’s no doubting it; she won the beautiful, all powerful, indulgent alien nerd girlfriend lottery, and she won it big time.

“Sounds great,” she says. “Just one more thing.”

She leans across, quick as a flash, and kisses Liara on the cheek. The red smudge from earlier in the evening now has a friend, cosying up next to it. Liara blushes, bright spots of pink popping up high on her cheekbones, and it’s so damned charming that Kasumi can’t resist ducking in for another one, this time full on her lips. 

“Last thing I’ll steal tonight,” she promises in a whisper, mouth just barely touching Liara’s own. Liara’s laugh is a small, sweet puff of air, and maybe kleptomania is a catching sickness, because she leans back in to steal one of her own.


End file.
